Are Walls Immoral?

“The fact is a wall is an immorality. It’s not who we are as a nation.”

Said Nancy Pelosi, the newly elected speaker of the US House of Representatives, regarding President Trump’s renewed efforts to fund a wall on America’s Southern border.

Putting aside Pelosi’s vested electoral interests in wilfully sabotaging President Trump’s agenda, and ensuring America’s continued demographic transformation, we can proceed to an interesting inquiry: are walls and the forcible barring of peoples necessarily immoral?

In short, no.

In making this case foundational to any nationalist worldview, consider the definition of a wall: “thing regarded as a protective or restrictive barrier.”

However, while literal walls are useful, this post shall broadly outline the benefits of both physical walls, and metaphorical walls– other legal barriers to mass entry.

Now, to the substance.

Given walls are restrictive barriers, they act to keep people out; as President Trump intends to do at America’s Southern border. But it is precisely this exclusionary nature that makes walls moral. Walls help individuals protect the fruits of their own labour; and groups in protecting the longevity of goods, services, communities and infrastructure they’ve paid for and worked towards their entire lives. At the very least, walls ensure a controlled human inflow–those who’ve contributed more to their nations, countries and communities–can decide who comes to their lands and on what terms.

In this respect, President Trump’s analogy between wealthy politicians’ purported right to create barriers, and America’s suggested lack thereof to do something similar, hits at a glaring moral contradiction. Americans have no right to protect the countries they’ve lived and worked in their entire lives? Then Nancy Pelosi has no right to exclude an ex-Klansman from living in her residence. Needless to say, imposing any such principle upon Pelosi or the American people, would be profoundly unjust.

Yet while the civilisational contributions of living Americans, Australians and other Indigenous peoples are significant; the work of those who came beforehand was greater. Comes the axiomatic challenge– walls are immoral because they protect (mostly) unearned wealth; people shouldn’t have a divine right to things they haven’t worked for. Nonetheless, that which we inherited was deliberately created for us, and in Burke’s all-enduring words, “civilisation is a pact between the living, dead and the yet unborn.” As is the case with everything else, countries don’t exist in a vacuum. Thus because our countries were explicitly created for Western people, walls ensure we don’t give away what we don’t possess the right to.

Stridently delineated boundaries also increase feelings of belonging, by defining communities along various salient sources of identity. While other identities certainly matter (religious, cultural, moral, national), communities which are more racially homogenous tend to have higher levels of altruism, trust and cooperation. Should it therefore come as no surprise that Kaunianen, Finland was recently crowned the happiest town in the world; as opposed to Detroit, Michigan?

Walls also make better neighbours. They ensure each people (where practical), is allowed a territory to express their own cultural, religious and physiological mores free from interference. This manifestation in of itself promotes peace, and when said prerogative is not respected–as in Mexico’s ongoing Reconquista of America–this leads to animosity between sovereign states. Likewise, when each people (again, where practical) have their own territory, this averts the hatred, segregation, and bloodshed that consistently plagues multi-racial societies.

Walls are not immoral; the myriad of benefits which flow from their construction, means they are indeed moral creations.

8 thoughts on “Are Walls Immoral?”

True – this is the true clash of the Titans between the Don and Nancy. Both will be watching the polling surveys closely I expect. I have a feeling the Don has been outsmarted on this one by Nancy – a politically astute old bird – but time will tell.

Sorry, I have to disagree with you here.
This wall that Trump wants to build is a complete waste of time and money. If you do some detailed research, it makes very little difference to restricting illegal migration to technological solutions, and the same goes for illegal drugs smuggling that Trumps keeps on banging on about – nearly all the seizures are made at legal points of entry because having human carries go through these is the most rational option for the drug lords.
Trump is obsessed with the wall simply because this is what he promised his base during the electoral campaign. He could not get the wall funded when the House was controlled by the GOP and he has no chance of getting the wall funded now the Democrats are in control, so effectively he has backed himself into a corner with no way out except to announce a “national emergency”. Outside his immediate base the whole idea of this wall is unpopular and the government shutdown is a stiff penalty to pay.
I am strongly against illegal economic migration but Trump is going about this in his usual hamfisted way. He should sign the Dem clean funding bills to get the government open again and then sit down with the Dem leadership in an adult manner and find an acceptable compromise.

I am not for the obsession over the wall itself: most illegal immigrants instead overstay their visas; and besides, it is legal immigration that is truly transforming America. Nevertheless, the wall would provide great symbolic value and limit illegal immigration; despite the wall not being as much about the wall as Trump would have it. So I favour the wall itself, but this post defended walls both in a literal and a metaphorical sense.

And for those who fuss over costs, these are generally the same people who have no problem with the lack of enforcing the Southern border for decades upon decades. Claiming a 5 billion or 20 billion wall would be ‘too expensive’ is a dishonest case, especially when the US spends 700 billion on its military per year, not to mention security aid which goes to other countries eg. Israel.

Not sure the Dems see it in terms of cost – as you say it is more about the ineffectiveness of such a structure compared with other solutions. Most fentomyl is posted from China for example.
Trump in my opinion is grandstanding on this issue to his base and is out of synch with the rest of America. Solutions need to be found but not in this aggressively cofrontational way. The Dems, after all, owe him absolutely nothing.